


The Case of the Decoy Tortoise

by Siria



Series: The Clyde Trilogy [1]
Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 00:51:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan sipped at her coffee as she shuffled into the living room, grateful as always for how caffeine could make the world bearable before midday. She rounded the corner, stopped, stared, and blinked. "Sherlock, why are you making a leash for a tortoise?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Case of the Decoy Tortoise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dogeared](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogeared/gifts).



> Thanks to sheafrotherdon for betaing!

Joan sipped at her coffee as she shuffled into the living room, grateful as always for how caffeine could make the world bearable before midday. She rounded the corner, stopped, stared, and blinked. "Sherlock, why are you making a leash for a tortoise?"

"It may shock you to know," Sherlock said without looking up, "that there are surprisingly few commercially-available walking leashes for tortoises." He was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the living room floor. Clyde was balanced on one of his knees, chewing stoically on what looked like a lump of zucchini, while Sherlock braided lengths of ribbon around his shell, constructing a kind of harness. 

"Not especially," Joan said, sitting on the sofa and wrapping her palms around her mug's warmth. "Nor does the fact that you're being deliberately obtuse."

Sherlock looked up—the better, Joan suspected, for her to see the way he rolled his eyes. She didn't take the bait. 

"I find myself in need of a decoy pet for the Sitwell case," he said. He kept braiding as he talked, long strands of green and yellow and blue worked into a thin rope by nimble fingers. "And Clyde fits the bill quite nicely."

"How is your own tortoise a _decoy_ pet?"

"Watson!" Sherlock sounded vaguely scandalised. "Clyde is a valued confederate and coadjutor who shall merely be adopting the _role_ of a decoy pet. Much as you and I…" He waggled a hand in the air. "… At the Norwegian Embassy reception."

Joan sighed. "No one bought that we were cousins, Sherlock."

"Oh, I'm quite aware of that fact," he said, pausing to check the rope for length. "But there was of course the element of uncertainty, the self-doubt occasioned by the nagging thought that perhaps they were being prejudiced in this era of internationally blended families, et cetera, et cetera, and hence the distraction needed to retrieve the missing gems."

"Hence the melodrama that almost caused a diplomatic incident," Joan pointed out. She took another sip of her coffee to prevent herself from admitting that it had been pretty exciting—like something out of a Bond movie, exchanging pleasantries with ambassadors while casing the exits and keeping a discreet eye on a prowling, tuxedo-clad Sherlock. 

"That was hardly melodrama," Sherlock said. He seemed to have completed the harness to his satisfaction, tying the end of it off in an intricate knot. "Very little screaming, hardly any tabloid presence. For that, I refer you to the hallowed halls of my alma mater."

Joan had no desire to hear yet another anecdote about Sherlock's time at Cambridge: combine his usual lack of squeamishness with a huge cast of Tarquins, Imogens and Alistairs, and Joan had already learned enough about heirs to earldoms vomiting into toilet cisterns to last her a lifetime. She hurriedly changed the subject. "So how does this tie into the Sitwell case, exactly?"

Sherlock picked Clyde up and, looking at him, lifted his voice and declaimed, "Come forth, I say! there's other business for thee: Come, thou tortoise!"

Joan blinked. "Excuse me?"

" _The Tempest_ ," Sherlock said, setting Clyde down on the floor. "Act 1, Scene 2."

"Do we need to have the talk again, about the importance of context?"

"Sitwell's erstwhile accomplice is currently directing an Off-Off-Broadway production of said play. He wishes for the set design to include exotic animals for the purposes of verisimilitude, and has put up a casting call for owners of such pets to attend an audition."

"Clyde counts as an exotic animal?"

"Given the existence of the aforementioned line in the play," Sherlock said, "I feel I could also argue for his being symbolic."

Joan and Sherlock both looked at Clyde; Clyde looked peaceably back. 

"I suppose," Joan said, feeling somewhat dubious, "he could be symbolic if he put his mind to it."

"That's the spirit, Watson." 

Joan settled back against the armrest and drained the last of her coffee. "So your plan is to infiltrate an indie Shakespeare production with a tortoise on a leash in order to find evidence to implicate a suspected serial arsonist?"

Sherlock blinked at her. "I believe I just established that, yes."

"I know you did," Joan said, "I just wanted to hear the whole scenario out loud."

"If this is an attempt," Sherlock said, raising his chin, "to mock a perfectly logical plan, I do not appreciate it."

"Oh, I'm not mocking," Joan said, and paused for a beat before saying, "When I tell Marcus and Alfredo though, they'll probably mock."

Sherlock grumbled something under his breath. 

"And if that's any nonsense about the burden of genius," Joan continued, "I'll tell Miss Hudson. Intelligence isn't insurance against silly ideas."

Sherlock's face did something complicated. "A fair point."

The two of them sat quietly for a moment, watching as Clyde set off on an expedition across the floor, the ribbon spooling out behind him. When he seemed likely to head underneath the sofa, Sherlock gently tugged on the lead, sending him in an arc around it and off in the direction of the hallway. 

"You realise," Joan said, "that he couldn't possibly get anywhere fast enough for that to be necessary."

"Sometimes," Sherlock said softly, "control can be quite a good simulacrum of belonging."

Joan looked sharply over at him, but Sherlock's gaze was still fixed on Clyde. He hardly ever brought up the subject of Irene—Moriarty, whatever Joan was supposed to call her—even obliquely.

"However!" Sherlock said, bouncing up from his spot on the floor like a jack-in-the-box exploding outwards. "No time for amateur psychologising. James Browning and his tortoise Testudo have an audition to attend."

"Sure," Joan said, because there was no way she was going to inquire why a tortoise needed a pseudonym.

*****

With Sherlock out of the house, the brownstone was blissfully quiet. Joan painted her toenails a bright coral without fearing that sudden loud thumps from downstairs would make her tip the bottle over; ordered in pho and a banh mi for lunch without having to worry that Sherlock would take one look at the delivery person and suddenly declare them a key witness in a recent drive-by shooting. 

Not that Joan hadn't found the case interesting, but it had been two months and still not a single local pizza place would deliver to them. 

She heard a key turn in the lock a little after three, and looked up from her book to see Sherlock march in, Clyde tucked under one arm. She raised both eyebrows. "Making a fashion statement? Or rejected from a Harry Potter movie?"

"Hrm?" Sherlock looked down at himself, as if noticing for the first time that he was wearing a set of long, tattered robes over his t-shirt and pants. "Neither, actually. I was offered the position of understudy for the role of Prospero."

Joan blinked. "You're joking."

Sherlock drew himself up to his full height. "I never joke when it comes to the Bard, Watson."

Joan shot him a look. 

"Fine, fine," Sherlock said, setting Clyde down on the floor before flopping down in one of the chairs. "But James Browning doesn't, and between that and his possession of an upper-class English accent, our bohemian arsonist is quite enamoured with him. I shall have ample opportunity for observation at close range during the rehearsals."

"Enamoured, huh?" Joan fought a grin. 

"There is no need for salacious speculation," Sherlock said waspishly.

Joan turned the page in her book. "Given what happened with that attorney in Poughkeepsie—"

"I may have indulged his amorous attentions on one occasion—"

"You practically dry-humped him in an alleyway, Sherlock. In full view of me _and_ a clergyman."

"Well," Sherlock said, " _Poughkeepsie_ ," as if that explained anything. 

Of course, Joan thought, to him maybe it did. 

"How did Clyde's audition go?" Joan asked, sticking a bookmark between the pages of her book and setting it down beside her. 

"Passed with flying colours," Sherlock said, looking inordinately proud. "He'll even have a credit in the show's programme—though under his sobriquet, naturally."

"Naturally," Joan said. She stood, deciding in favour of tea before she went out for a run. "I'm going to make some tea; there's leftover pho in the fridge if you'd like some."

"It occurs to me," Sherlock said as she started to walk towards the kitchen, "that I have been uncommonly fortunate in my choice of partners." He fiddled with the braid on his robes as he spoke, and even after months of knowing him, it fascinated her: how one person could embody such self-assurance and such hesitancy. 

"Clyde makes a good investigator, huh?" she said gently. 

"He does," Sherlock said. "He and other people. They possess patience, which is a quality I have come to consider a, a rare and valuable virtue."

Joan repressed a grin. "Sherlock, did you just compare me to a tortoise?"

He pulled a face. "Only in the most complimentary of ways!"

Joan rested her hand on his shoulder briefly, just long enough to feel the muscles there shiver and relax, as if in the aftermath of putting down some great weight. "Slow and steady often wins," she said, and met his smile with one of her own.


End file.
